The Economic Administration Reforms Commission headed by L.K. Jha will not be the super-duper high-power planning body it was earlier slated to be. The Planning Commission and the Finance Ministry put their foot down when the idea was first mooted but were told that the panel would deal mostly with matters relating to tax administration - a relatively minor chore - and would be more or less a follow-up to the committee on indirect taxes which L.K. Jha had earlier headed, and, at best, a watered down version of the Administrative Reforms Commission (headed by none other than Morarji Desai) whose reports are gathering dust in the Cabinet secretariat.

Ignoring Maruti

Maruti has been virtually dismissed with a token allocation of Rs 1 crore in Finance Minister Venkataraman's budget of Rs 23,000 crore but it has apparently evoked even less in the way of response from foreign auto companies without whose support the project would be doomed. Out of the dozen major automobile companies in Europe and Japan which were approached by the Industry Ministry for collaboration, only one is said to have agreed to send a representative to New Delhi for discussions, but that was before the budget. Among the companies which have either said 'no' or just kept mum are Toyota, Nissan and Honda from Japan. Volkswagen of West Germany and Fiat of Italy. Both Toyota and Nissan have plans to set up brand new auto-making plants in Europe with capacities of around 250,000 cars a year to start with, roughly eight times the current level of production in India. Two French companies, Peugeot and Renault, continue to show some interest in the project, but not much headway has been made since their last meeting with Indian officials in Paris.

A Parting Of Ways

Family-owned big business houses seem to be splitting faster than atoms in a reactor: The Jalans of Calcutta are apparently-righting over the future of a major company in the group - Asiatic Oxygen - and may and up with a three-way split - Asiatic Oxygen Ltd, Asiatic Oxygen Private Ltd and Asiatic Gases Ltd. The company was started 20 years ago as a competitive foil to the much bigger Indian Oxygen but it never really took off and has always been a poor second to the latter, though it has 10 units. At the other end of the country, the Sarabhais of Ahmedabad are reported to have split their empire in the middle, with the famous Calico Mills going to Suhrid Sarabhai and the newly established Ambalal Enterprises to his uncle. Gautam Sarabhai, Calico's main base is textiles and chemicals, while Gautam Sarabhai's new company covers nearly everything from drugs and pharmaceuticals to electronics and computers.

A Steady Increase

How big really are the big business houses? Tatas with assets of Rs 1,102 crore have been pushed down to second place by Birlas (with assets of 1,171 crore) but Tatas say that they will increase their assets by 50 per cent, if not more, within the next few years, when their thermal power plant at Trombay is expanded. What is more, they claimed a few years ago in a foreign paper that their assets were Rs 2,240 crore, which makes them actually twice as big as they are supposed to be. By the same token, the assets of Birla companies are estimated around Rs 3,500 crore although, like most business groups, Birlas too claim that there is no such thing as a Birla group. Unlike Tatas, however, Birlas are expanding very rapidly outside India and a Birla spokesman said recently that their assets outside India would soon overtake those inside the country.

Topping The List

The largest company does not necessarily have the largest number of shareholders. Tata Steel, No. 1 company in the private sector, has 63,300 shareholders while Hindustan Lever, which is way down in the ranking list but is No. 1 among subsidiaries of multinationals operating in India, topped the list with 81,600 shareholders in 1979-80. For some reason, foreign-owned companies seem to pull more weight with Indian shareholders with as many as five figuring in the list of top 10 companies.

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